274 research outputs found
Music and Lyrics Interactions and their Influence on Recognition of Sung Words: An Investigation of Word Frequency, Rhyme, Metric Stress, Vocal Timbre, Melisma, and Repetition Priming
This study investigated several factors presumed to influence the intelligibility of song lyrics. Twenty-seven participants listened to recordings of musical passages sung in English; each passage consisted of a brief musical phrase sung by a solo voice. Six vocalists produced the corpus of sung phrases. Eight hypotheses derived from common phonological and prosodic principles were tested. Intelligibility of lyrics was degraded: (i) when archaic language was used; (ii) when words were set in melismatic rather than syllabic contexts; (iii) when the musical rhythm did not match the prosodic speech rhythm; and (iv) when successive target words rhymed. Intelligibility of lyrics was facilitated: (i) when words contained diphthongs rather than monophthongs; (ii) when a word from an immediately previous passage reappeared; (iii) when a syllabic setting of a word was preceded by a melismatic setting of the same word. No difference in word intelligibility was observed between music theater singers and opera singers.</jats:p
The Bumble Bill: A Critical Analysis on Texasâs New Law Taking Indecent Exposure Regulations Online
Abstract forthcoming
Information dynamics: patterns of expectation and surprise in the perception of music
This is a postprint of an article submitted for consideration in Connection Science © 2009 [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Connection Science is available online at:http://www.tandfonline.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0954-0091&volume=21&issue=2-3&spage=8
Considering agency and data granularity in the design of visualization tools
The Ecuadorian Government supports Gonzalo Gabriel MĂ©ndez through a SENESCYT scholarship.Previous research has identified trade-offs when it comes to designing visualization tools. While constructive âbottom-upâ tools promote a hands-on, user-driven design process that enables a deep understanding and control of the visual mapping, automated tools are more efficient and allow people to rapidly explore complex alternative designs, often at the cost of transparency. We investigate how to design visualization tools that support a user-driven, transparent design process while enabling efficiency and automation, through a series of design workshops that looked at how both visualization experts and novices approach this problem. Participants produced a variety of solutions that range from example-based approaches expanding constructive visualization to solutions in which the visualization tool infers solutions on behalf of the designer, e.g., based on data attributes. On a higher level, these findings highlight agency and granularity as dimensions that can guide the design of visualization tools in this space.Postprin
Variational Hilbert space truncation approach to quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnets on frustrated clusters
We study the spin- Heisenberg antiferromagnet on a series of
finite-size clusters with features inspired by the fullerenes. Frustration due
to the presence of pentagonal rings makes such structures challenging in the
context of quantum Monte-Carlo methods. We use an exact diagonalization
approach combined with a truncation method in which only the most important
basis states of the Hilbert space are retained. We describe an efficient
variational method for finding an optimal truncation of a given size which
minimizes the error in the ground state energy. Ground state energies and
spin-spin correlations are obtained for clusters with up to thirty-two sites
without the need to restrict the symmetry of the structures. The results are
compared to full-space calculations and to unfrustrated structures based on the
honeycomb lattice.Comment: 22 pages and 12 Postscript figure
ENMTools 1.0: an R package for comparative ecological biogeography
The ENMTools software package was introduced in 2008 as a platform for making measurements on environmental niche models (ENMs, frequently referred to as species distribution models or SDMs), and for using those measurements in the context of newly developed Monte Carlo tests to evaluate hypotheses regarding niche evolution. Additional functionality was later added for model selection and simulation from ENMs, and the software package has been quite widely used. ENMTools was initially implemented as a Perl script, which was also compiled into an executable file for various platforms. However, the package had a number of significant limitations; it was only designed to fit models using Maxent, it relied on a specific Perl distribution to function, and its internal structure made it difficult to maintain and expand. Subsequently, the R programming language became the platform of choice for most ENM studies, making ENMTools less usable for many practitioners. Here we introduce a new R version of ENMTools that implements much of the functionality of its predecessor as well as numerous additions that simplify the construction, comparison and evaluation of niche models. These additions include new metrics for model fit, methods of measuring ENM overlap, and methods for testing evolutionary hypotheses. The new version of ENMTools is also designed to work within the expanding universe of R tools for ecological biogeography, and as such includes greatly simplified interfaces for analyses from several other R packages
Nucleation of a sodium droplet on C60
We investigate theoretically the progressive coating of C60 by several sodium
atoms. Density functional calculations using a nonlocal functional are
performed for NaC60 and Na2C60 in various configurations. These data are used
to construct an empirical atomistic model in order to treat larger sizes in a
statistical and dynamical context. Fluctuating charges are incorporated to
account for charge transfer between sodium and carbon atoms. By performing
systematic global optimization in the size range 1<=n<=30, we find that Na_nC60
is homogeneously coated at small sizes, and that a growing droplet is formed
above n=>8. The separate effects of single ionization and thermalization are
also considered, as well as the changes due to a strong external electric
field. The present results are discussed in the light of various experimental
data.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure
Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical themes
This study investigated cognitive and emotional effects of syncopation, a feature
of musical rhythm that produces expectancy violations in the listener by
emphasising weak temporal locations and de-emphasising strong locations in
metric structure. Stimuli consisting of pairs of unsyncopated and syncopated
musical phrases were rated by 35 musicians for perceived complexity, enjoyment,
happiness, arousal, and tension. Overall, syncopated patterns were more enjoyed,
and rated as happier, than unsyncopated patterns, while differences in perceived
tension were unreliable. Complexity and arousal ratings were asymmetric by
serial order, increasing when patterns moved from unsyncopated to syncopated,
but not significantly changing when order was reversed. These results suggest
that syncopation influences emotional valence (positively), and that while
syncopated rhythms are objectively more complex than unsyncopated rhythms, this
difference is more salient when complexity increases than when it decreases. It
is proposed that composers and improvisers may exploit this asymmetry in
perceived complexity by favoring formal structures that progress from
rhythmically simple to complex, as can be observed in the initial sections of
musical forms such as theme and variations
- âŠ